"Allen!"
Went out the call. Steve from the engineering bellowed the now infamous secret code word for contact with new life forms. You see it all started as a joke being played on one of the new crew men as part of a hazing ritual. After the crewman had been appropriately humiliated by being stripped and tied up in the cargo hold for three days with nothing more than the company of a wooden horse named Philly which had an anatomically correct flesh light attached, he had been pulled out of the cargo area mid stroke and the remaining crew had made fun of him for his absurdly large penis that would be completely unpractical when to came to human/zorb relations. Following this fiasco, the crew then settled down and spoke to Jim (this was the name of the crewman who was in the hold for 3 days, and not the name of the security guard who was caught playing a violin in the toilet to "help him relax"), and Jim admitted to having rechristened Philly, Allen, even going so far as to specify that it was Allen with an "e" and not Allan with an "a", he then followed up with some sort of a racist rant and how a and e were just 180o rotations of the same letter and that it was all a conspiracy by the chicken industry to get people to eat more eggs and fewer apples.
Jim didn't last long on the ship (most of the crew got sick of him and one fateful night Jim had an "accident" involving a Zorb, 3 rolls of duct tape, 2 pencils and a can opener and was promptly removed from the ship having been deemed unfit for duty). But the term Allen stuck around and after several centuries it because to mean contact with a new life form in honor of those 3 hot days Jim spent in the cargo area. Most of the crew didn't know the story and didn't bother asking they but soldiers, little cogs in a big machine trained to search the universe for and discover new planets upon which to farm chickens (Also unknown to the crew was that in fact they weren't working for the "Intergalactic Federation of Planets For Some Exploring Cunt", they were in fact working for the "Intergalactic Federation of Poultry Farmers Supporting Egg Consumption")
But that's enough history, let's get back to Steve and his predicament of being the only crew member that has awoken early from his cryogenic sleep to find a as yet undiscovered alien standing over him with what looked like arms about 4 feet long. This was the 3rd ship Steve had been on so he knew the drill pretty well, they had a 5% chance of not making it back so it seemed like his days were numbered after only 3 tours, his life and the life of his family flashed before him, growing up on the farm, meeting Daisy for the first time at the age of 35, losing his virginity at 54, giving birth to 3 children then signing up with the IFPFSEC at the age of 56 to try save enough money to move out of his parents place. As he looked closer to his new found captor he noticed this new Allen had a cigarette in it's mouth, well, could have been mouth, could have been ass, it was 50/50 at this point. Steve gently motioned, trying to use hand signals to indicate he wanted to bum a cigarette. Allen, eventually understood and handed Steve a lit cigarette.
The room slowly started to fill with a gas, it's source wasn't obvious but rather the gas seemed to be forming right in front his his eyes. All sorts of wild ideas danced through Steve's head as to how this unfathomable cloud of unknown origin and substance was suddenly appearing. There was a short snarl like sound that emanated Allen's cigarette holding orifice.
"Yaaarrrhhhhawkwkwk"
A look of fear betrayed Steve's attempt at seeming indifferent to first contact. Meanwhile Allen was having the time of it's life, he was originally planning to spend the day asleep on the couch watching old re-runs of Fraiser and some other unenviable show where the humans must fight or be killed, this was far better. Although currently there was a smell emanating from this lifeform in front of him, not unlike that of a rotten tomato sandwich. Or rather it reminded him of a rotten tomato sandwich, the kind his mother used to make after he'd fallen over and hurt his head. This memory had made him a little gassy so he farted a few times to release the tension.
All this happened in a split second. The thoughts the emotions all transferred into the room and again out of it without any sense of it's presence. But play time was over, and Allen had a job to do. He (well Allen isn't technically male, as his species isn't born with either male or female genitalia but rather is able to assume either gender depending on their diet. Recently he fell pregnant from a one night stand and this had made him crave meat. Lots of meat. The problem was that meat was a sure fire way to turn into a man and abort the pregnancy. He was still trying to decide what to do when he was hit by a passing cyclist and in a fit of rage turned into a man and gave the cyclist a stern talking to.) communicated back to his ship, that there was meat and lots of it aboard this vessel it was ripe for harvest. The crew of the fateful mission M-Z5AJBRK8IEO will never see their planet P-Z3NVC8DS71C ever again. They would rue the day they decided to explore the coordinates 290/119. This was Zorb space and would always remain so.
The crackle over the radio came in and Allen went back to his ship with the cargo in toe.